1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system and method for developing a website. More particularly, the present invention allows a website to be created and updated by a non-technical user without knowledge or skills in programming Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other web-based programming.
2. Background Art
In business, the use of world wide websites has become an important tool in success. As such, many of today's businesses either have or are currently developing a website. One typical purpose of a website is to provide information to the public in an attempt to attract customers. In addition, many businesses develop websites that enable customers to transact goods/services directly on-line. Currently, developing websites requires a programmer who can program in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other web-based languages. The programmer will generally take content provided by business and convert it into HTML for posting to the website. Although effective, this system has many drawbacks. For example, it requires businesses to employ or contract the services of an expert HTML programmer, which can be extremely costly. Moreover, a programmer must be used every time website updating is needed. Since web content may need to change frequently and quickly in response to business needs, updates can be frequent occurrences.
Heretofore, attempts have been made to provide improved systems for developing a website in which the need for HTML programming is minimized. Such attempts, however, generally fail to provide a way to develop a website completely free of the need for HTML programming skill. That is, some level of HTML programming is still required. In addition, existing systems fail to provide much flexibility in developing the website. For example, existing systems fail to provide a way to define categories for the web pages, and assign creator groups to each category. This would allow generation of content to be controlled so that only creator groups assigned to a particular category could create or update (define) content for the particular category. Moreover, existing systems fail to provide a way to dynamically define and depict a site diagram (i.e., a hierarchical relationship between the web pages) through link documents that point to a web page in the hierarchy. Such a feature would better enable the creators of the website to easily arrange, rearrange and/or view particular web pages within the website. Still yet, existing systems fail to provide a breadcrumb system for providing a reader of the website with a browsing history that includes a list of web pages and corresponding links. Such a feature would allows the reader to see what web pages he/she has visited, and easily return to a particular page by selecting the corresponding link. Moreover, existing systems fail to provide a way to receive, track and handle feedback for the website. Since reader feedback can be highly effective in the success of a website, a system for receiving, tracking and handling the feedback can be essential.
These any many other features are not currently provided by existing systems and, accordingly, a need exists for an improved system and method for developing a website.